


work song

by pinkcupboardwitch



Category: Shades of Magic - V. E. Schwab
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Gen, Implied Body Horror, Stockholm Syndrome, Torture, one hurt/comfort hold the comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 03:09:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19759357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkcupboardwitch/pseuds/pinkcupboardwitch
Summary: Antari-class cyborgs are very hard to kill. This has its downsides.





	work song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Muffinworry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muffinworry/gifts).



> For Muffinworry, who requested “corporate/cyberpunk AU in which Holland gets captured.” Fuck you.

They will not want him after this.

The hallway is an abattoir. Holland drags himself through, one eye gone, head down, almost sobbing with pain. Gunpowder streaks and blood smear the walls. He should be able to smell the residue from the firefight. Nothing processes. The node is screaming in his ears.

“Take the eye,” the commandant had ordered. “Military-grade tech there. _Don’t_ fuck it up. The rest of the hardware too. The jaw, the trigger fingers, the skin implants. As much as you can without killing him.”

“ _Without_ killing him?”

“He killed my brother.” For the first time their face is human with grief and rage. “On Dane’s orders. He smiled. I want him conscious and alive for at least a day after this.”

I had no choice, Holland remembers thinking. This node here at the base of my skull, the one with his brand, the one plugged into each and every nerve; I had no choice. I smile when _he_ tells me to. No more.

Then the drill had started to whir. Drills. Someone forced a rubber gag into his mouth to stop him biting off his tongue. He loses track, after.

The node now is shrilling to the edge of madness. Useless now, nothing from it but raw feedback. Half his balance is gone without it. Not that it matters. He cannot walk. Can barely crawl. He doesn’t know where he’s crawling  _to._

The Danes are pirates, raiders. Wolves that rule the stars and the ‘Net alike. They have no use for a broken tool. They will kill him. Or throw him out as trash.

Free. Unwanted. An end to the pain. Unwanted.

Copper and saliva in his mouth; sobbing as he hauls his ribs and legs through a field of corpses. His fingers hit something. He searches, gropes tentatively; slowly realizes it’s a boot. Not dead, not twisted and mangled, but upright. Disconcertingly _clean_ in the midst of all this carnage.

The whirring of the node in his ears - whining, nauseously insistent - stills to the hum of utter peace.

“Pet. Oh, pet.”

He looks up.

White and chrome and leather and steel, gleaming; long fingers cradling a gun that’s as deadly beautiful as grief; eyes and pale mouth like that of the gasoline saints that nestle in every ‘runner’s cabin. Impossible through the daze to tell if it’s Athos or Astrid. He can’t smell. He can barely hear.

He doesn’t realize he’s started to whimper - fearful animal sounds that edge each breath with pain or dumb adoration or both, both, always both - as cold fingers trace the hinge of what had been his jaw, tilt his face up to the light.

“Shhh, shhh.” No pity or revulsion at all in that face: only an endless calm like snow. Inhuman. Safe. “We can rebuild you.”

The fingers slip to the back of his head, touch,  _twist_ , and suddenly Holland is screaming and screaming.


End file.
